Arunachal Pradesh, the region of the Rising Sun, is one of the seven sister states of India in the north-east part of the country. The state has borders with Indian states of Assam and Nagaland as well as international borders with Bhutan and China.

One thing that is most striking about Arunachal
Pradesh is its traditional women dresses, attires and fashions. Though different costumes are worn by different tribal women
reflecting various local cultures, but they have typical patterns,
colours and designs in common.

In
Focus

However, in modern times many young students are
taking courses in fashion designing modifying the traditional designs
for mass production and marketing.

At a cricket match in Rupa and Tenga Valley of
West Kameng district, educated tribal girls came up with designer
clothes with traditional flavours. They came in white clothes
decorated with colourful laces. Even their skull caps were white
decorated with colourful laces.

The women's long jacket in combination with
sleeveless chemise had also changed and so was the long and narrow
strip of cloth with stripes tied to their waist as shown in the
picture.

Accessories are important for tribal women, but
the designs of silver earrings, bamboo earrings designed with red
coloured beads or turquoises are also seeing a change. Also, the
clothes which earlier covered their upper part of their body are
getting replaced with blouses.